SUMMARY BY CHATGPT

Overview:
In this episode, Tom shares his “Online Survival Kit” – a blend of physical tools, digital resources, and productivity tips for anyone serious about building a successful online business. He draws parallels between real-world survival gear and essential tools for online entrepreneurs, emphasizing the need for preparation, quality equipment, and smart investment.
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Key Highlights:
Podcast & Personal Updates:
• Episode 1000 is coming soon—a special tribute to Tom’s dad.
• Episode 989 discussed Venmo safety; episodes 985–987 covered modern shopping carts.
• Free automation book: screwthecommute.com/automatefree (Note: references to KickStartCart will be updated to Kartra).
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Physical Tools for Your Online Survival Kit:
1. Dual Monitors: Dramatically increase productivity and ease of multitasking.
2. Light Kit: Essential for good video quality on Zoom, recordings, and training. Get it cheap on Facebook Marketplace.
3. High-Quality Microphone: Avoid condenser mics like the Yeti for home use—use a dynamic mic to reduce background noise.
4. Good Chair: Prevent long-term physical issues like sciatica—don’t cheap out.
5. Electric Heater & Quiet Fan: Maintain comfort without noisy HVAC affecting recordings.
6. Simple, Real Background: Avoid virtual/green screen glitches; use a clean, well-lit physical backdrop.
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Digital/Software Essentials:
1. Word Processor, PDF Converter & Spreadsheets: Basic tools for handling business documents (Google Docs/Sheets are free options).
2. Reliable Internet Connection: Crucial for credibility, especially for Zoom and podcasts. Avoid shared, weak connections.
o Consider mesh systems or Cat6 cables for stability.
3. VPN (Optional): Use to view location-specific ads or improve security.
4. Password Manager: Use something like RoboForm or 1Password to save time and improve security.
5. Macro Program: Automate repetitive typing tasks.
o PC: ShortKeys
o Mac: Keyboard Maestro
Great for FAQs, web addresses, and standard replies—saves hours.
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Bonus Tools & Tips:
• eBay Account: Great for buying gear at lower prices. Use “Completed Listings” to check real-world sale prices.
• Facebook Marketplace: Excellent for finding lightly used business equipment at a fraction of the cost.
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Closing Message:
Tom emphasizes that running a real online business requires more than just a phone and a dream. Success comes from being well-equipped, efficient, and making smart investments in tools and knowledge.

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Episode 990 – Online Survival Kit
[00:00:08] Welcome to Screw the Commute. The entrepreneurial podcast dedicated to getting you out of the car and into the money, with your host, lifelong entrepreneur and multimillionaire, Tom Antion.

[00:00:24] Hey everybody, it's Tom here with episode 990 of Screw the Commute podcast. Think of that. 990 episodes. I've sat here and talk to you folks. Crazy, huh? Hey, listen. Episode 1000 is coming up. It's going to be a special tribute to my dad that I did a long time ago, and I think I'm going to redo it. Episode 1000. So watch for that and hope you didn't miss episode 989. That was Venmo. Pros and cons keep you safe using Venmo. And of course, I want you to listen to this. 985 to 987 episodes on modern shopping carts and all the ways it can save you money and automate your business. Of course, anytime you want to get to a back episode, you go to YouTube.com and then the episode number and this is 990, and then again 985 to 987 for the modern shopping carts and pick up a copy of my automation book, and the parts in it for KickStartCart are going to be edited and changed to Kartra. After all these years, we've been forced to switch shopping systems, and so that's what we're going to do. But if you download the book now, just ignore the parts about kickstart cart and you go to screwthecommute.com/automatefree to grab a copy of that book because most of it is still good. And of course, check out my mentor program. Greatinternetmarketingtraining.com.

[00:01:51] All right. So for many, many, many, many, many years, I've been kind of an amateur survivalist. So, I know a bunch of ways to make fire. And I always have an IFAK with me when I'm in the car. That's an individual first aid kit for trauma stuff and know how to build shelters and that kind of stuff. So I was looking at some some of the stuff online today, and I was thinking, the people I'm trying to help with online stuff need an online survival kit. So, today is going to be some of the things you can put in your online survival kit. Some will be physical, some will be digital, and they'll save you money and automate your business. And I know there's lots of ways that you can run an online business. I mean, you can run everything from a cell phone at Starbucks, all right. But I'm talking about getting serious, making lots and lots of money, and making your life easy, but not so easy that you can't really make money. So here's some of the tools. And like I said, some are going to be to automate your business. Some are physical and software and stuff. So let's start with some physical stuff. I really think you should have a full size monitor and a second monitor, like.

[00:03:09] And when I say full size monitor could be a laptop, but a nice big desktop monitor and a second monitor. Both Macs and PCs can easily handle dual monitors. I even have four monitors in my office on the other end of the building. Here, your life will change like crazy if you go to dual monitors because single monitors, you're, you know, closing windows and things are covering things and you're going, it takes forever. But if you just had a second monitor, you can have one document on one side or email on one side and a video program on another side. I mean, you could just do all kinds of stuff that you can't do with one monitor. You can do it with one monitor, but even the monitors, now that you can split the screen, you're dealing with small screens and a lot of this, a lot of this stuff is just it just takes too long and it's too hard on tiny little monitors. So get yourself dual monitors. All right, a light kit. So you're going to be doing stuff if you're serious about this. I know there's a big deal with faceless videos. Yes, but that's getting flooded with every numbnuts on Earth and very difficult to make any money. That way people want to know who they're dealing with. And so a simple light kit, and this is a sidebar here that you really need to get familiar with, Facebook Marketplace, because I get so much stuff off of there, you could find a beautiful light kit for 20 to $50, probably for a three light kit, and it's going to be probably virtually brand new because the people got it and thought they were going to be big YouTube stars and then didn't do crap.

[00:04:54] So I get all kinds of stuff on there. In fact, I just got it. I needed a very quick. It was like a Sunday, a USB microphone for laptop thing I had to do somewhere else off of my regular mic. And I went on there were like all over the place. I paid $5 for a brand new USB microphone, got all the jobs done, I had to get done on the laptop, and and it sounded pretty darn good. It's not as good as this USB or this. Uh, sure SMB is. What I've got now is a $400 microphone, but I paid five bucks and it came out really good. Get handy with Facebook Marketplace. Get yourself a light kit so you can light yourself up and look look good on when you're doing videos or training stuff or zoom calls or any of that stuff. Now I also suggest you get a really good microphone. This is part of your survival kit sounding good. People will put up with poor video, which I don't really want you to have. I want you to have a good For, you know. Okay. Webcam. But if they can't hear you, it's over with.

[00:06:02] And most people, I, myself included, used to promote the Yeti mics. Inexpensive, readily available. Sound great. Problem is, they're called condenser microphones instead of dynamic microphones. Condenser means it's super, super, super sensitive. And you think, well, good that for cheap I get this super sensitive mic. Well, yeah you do, but it picks up every kind. You know, if an ant is crawling across your floor, it picks it up. So you want a dynamic microphone unless you are in a soundproof booth in a in a studio? No. For most home office stuff, a dynamic microphone is going to cut out a lot of the noises that you don't want on your final recordings or your live events. So that's a good dynamic microphone. And here's something you probably didn't think of a decent chair. I'm suffering from sciatica thing from sitting in a soft chair for, I don't know, 15 years straight, working off my laptop on my lap with a second monitor over on a table. And it took its toll. So get a good chair under you youngsters out there that aren't worried about this now. You will later. Okay, so get yourself a good chair. And here's these are things you just don't think about. Get yourself an electric heater and a quiet fan because most air conditioning systems make noise. And that's. And you ignore it because it's surrounding you all day long. But the microphone doesn't. So when you're recording stuff, you're going to have this noise on the background.

[00:07:47] So in the dead of winter, I just turn everything off. I have a little electric heater under my podcast desk. In the summer I got a very quiet fan. I don't know, six feet away. Just keep an airflow through here so I can turn the air conditioning off so it doesn't get on these recordings. Uh, okay. Let's see. Get a decent background that's not electronic. I mean, you can get zoom and all these stupid electronic backgrounds. None of them look good. Usually it makes you look stupid. Just get yourself a decent background and be done with it. You know, that way there's no editing. There's no disappearing when you wear the wrong colors. Like with green screen. And if you have wispy hair, you know, there's, like, a glow around your head that's, you know, it's just crazy. So just do a regular background, light it up nice with your light kit and be done with that. Okay, so that's some physical stuff. So remember we're on your online survival kit. If you really want to be serious about making money online, you got to have tools. You know, these people that think that they're just going to use a cell phone and buy nothing. Nothing to make their business work. Right. And they think they're going to get rich. None of them do. You might you might see them claiming that they do. So they can sell you some kind of horseshit.

[00:09:12] All right. But they don't make any money. You got to invest in yourself. And it's not a lot of money to to do this, but I mean, compared to, you know, start a McDonald's franchise for $2 million. All right. And then can't find employees. So invest in yourself. So anyway, a word processor is getting into some software stuff. Word processor, the ability to convert something to a PDF and have some spreadsheets available. Now, I, I am not a spreadsheet kind of guy, but when you're moving some of your data, it's going to be in a spreadsheet format. And so you've got to at least have the capability Quality. And, uh, you know, I can do files on my Microsoft office, but if you don't have any of that, you can go on your your Gmail account and go to those bunch of dots up by your face up in the top right. And you got all these services, one of which is Google Sheets. And so learn how to use that so that you can get your data in and out and move it places. Okay. This next thing you'd think would be, you know, it'd be kind of juvenile to even mention this, but you've got to have a good internet connection if you want to survive on a good internet business. And I get these people, I mean, it's to the point where you should consider where you live if you're serious about internet stuff.

[00:10:45] Because I get these people, they they rent a condo because it has free Wi-Fi. Well, 4 or 5 different units are sharing it. And if the kids next door are gaming all day long using up all the bandwidth, you have this crappy internet connection where buffers and you get you look stupid on zoom because it locks up and you can't do podcast interviews because you can't trust that your, uh, your, you know, you you won't poop out in the middle of them. You got to have a good internet connection. So one of my things is, is kind of a sidebar here, but smart use of Wi-Fi. Make sure you you have your own internet connection. Check out if you're moving with neighbors to ask them how their connection is, and if they don't do anything all day on it, that doesn't count. You're going to be uploading videos and doing all kinds of stuff in a business, and so they might do nothing other than send some email once in a while where you're trying to run a business. So try to talk to people that are actually doing stuff on their internet, or even if their kids are gamers, that's good to know because that takes a really good internet connection. The worst thing you want to do is look stupid to people that could help you. But if you're on zoom, or if you're doing podcast interviews and you poop out, I'm not going to have you back.

[00:12:10] You know, you just caused me a whole bunch of crap because you had a terrible internet connection and you're not going to be on screw the commute ever again. Right. See? So you don't want that to happen and learn about mesh systems. And don't be afraid to get cat6 cables and hardwire to your internet connection, because that's the way to get the fastest of all. I had one lady. She said, well, I don't really like that cord running across the floor. And then she's locking up on all these zoom things and making an ass of herself, because she didn't like the fact that his cord had to run across the floor, running around the baseboard, run it in the ceiling, do something. But if you're going to be serious about an internet business. You've got to have good internet. And I hate to be such a prick about this, but you're an idiot if you don't do this right. You're just an idiot just clogging up the airways and ruining it for us good guys. All right, so do it right now. This is an optional thing, a VPN. It's a virtual private network. This allows you to pretend you're somewhere else and you say, well, that sounds kind of shaky. Tom. I'm not doing anything. Underworld. No, but maybe you have an event coming up. Let's say I live on the East Coast, right? And maybe I have an event or something I want to sell that's specific to somebody in California.

[00:13:36] Well, if I look up and I want to advertise this, if I look up ads here in Virginia Beach, I'm only going to get local stuff to Virginia Beach. I won't know what ads are running in California. So if I wanted to do that, I would just hook on to my VPN, tell it, give me a server in California, and then when I look up and see who's advertising and how they're advertising in California, then I get California ads because the world thinks I'm in California. That's what a VPN will do for you. A lot of people in China use them to get away from their restrictions and things like that. So. So a VPN, it's optional, but very handy to have. And, you know, kind of really gives you a higher level of security on stuff that you're looking at. All right. Next thing this is an absolute a password program. I happen to use Roboform. There's one called one password. But this in a highly encrypted fashion keeps all of my stuff. I mean, safe combinations and Social Security numbers and Medicare information and everything you can think of. And it gives you it'll generate crazy passwords for you. It has one click login that saves you a lot of time too, because, you know, I can't tell you how many times people pay a fortune to talk to me. And then I'm sitting there for 20 minutes.

[00:15:00] They can't find their password to get into what they want to show me, right? That's not acceptable. And you're just wasting time. So get yourself a good password program. And they have one click login. So if you if I wanted to go to eBay I go to my roboform click eBay. It goes there, logs in for me with one click. All right. So so that's the kind of power you can have with a highly encrypted program. I don't use the ones in my browsers because they, you know, they're going to be targets for hacking more than my roboform. And like I said the other one is called one password. Now a macro program. Now that sounds like a geek thing, right? Well, a geek a geek that I started out on the internet, Ilya Pozen just sold his third startup for $340 $40 million. All right. So so it's good to have geeks in your, uh, around you, but, uh, I was complaining to him about how I have to tape, you know, with. I've been teaching internet for, you know, some something near, uh, 29 years now, something like that. I've been selling on the internet for 31 years, and, uh. And I was complaining to him. I said he was in 10th grade at the time. I said, yeah, I have to type the same answers to people all the time. It's driving me crazy. And he said, shut up. You know, he always abused me.

[00:16:22] And I let him do it because every time he'd tell me something, it was right. So he said, shut up. And he came back in ten minutes with a program called Short Keys. At the time, it was 20 bucks. I think it might be 29 bucks. And I will unequivocally say you are crazy. One of my latest books is The Highly Educated Idiots is the name of it. You are a highly educated idiot if you don't do what I tell you right now, you're just wasting time and it's just crazy. So anyway, Short Keys is for PC and keyboard. Maestro is for Mac. And what these are, they're called macro programs, which sounds fancy, but all they do is they with a little key combination they type in, they could type in War and peace for you that you've pre-programmed into it. Web addresses answers to your frequently asked questions. Boom boom boom instantly. That's why I'm so lightning fast answering people, because I. I've heard it all before. And so I got the answer pre-programmed. And I can hit a couple keystrokes and it types it in and I can still customize it for you. Hey, Joe, I know you're having trouble with X, Y, and Z, but here's the answer. Boom. And then I put it in. And Joe can't believe how fast I got back to him. Say, and it makes my reputation way better. And people like to deal with companies that get back to them fast.

[00:17:52] Say so. You are crazy if you don't do this and you should be making your employees do it too. Why should you pay so much per hour or per week to have them making typos and typing the same crap over again? Say so. Short keys for the PC and keyboard. Maestro for the Mac Survival kit. Now I suggest you have an eBay account, because part of the reason I'm where I'm at today is because I don't pay retail for everything that I buy. Right. I told you about Facebook Marketplace. I probably should have put this in the Facebook marketplace, but I can know how much something should cost on the used market. And if I can't find it locally, I'll get it off of eBay. And you know, I don't do everything. You know, computers I don't usually do off of eBay. I buy them new or lease them if it makes sense for your business, but have an eBay account. And the trick with eBay is if you're it's harder to do on a cell phone, but on a laptop or a PC up near the search box. You click Advanced Search and then you click a box that says Completed Listings only, and then search for what you're searching for. It's going to tell you not just all the listings for that product. It's going to tell you the ones that actually sold and how much they sold for. So you can tell, hey, if there's some buy it now price, that's $40 more than what the average is selling for.

[00:19:22] You don't buy that auction. You go to some other one and make an offer around the price that they're selling for. And that's how you get the greatest bargains on this stuff. I actually have another thing. I'm trying to think of what the name of it is, but anyway. Oh, it's a snipe program. It's if something I really want. You never want to bid on things on eBay, because all you're doing is driving up the bid prices. Everybody's competing, so it's midnapur. That's what it's called. I pay so much a month for it, but it saved me a fortune in that I put how much I'm willing to pay for the thing and the auction number, and it waits till the last potential electronic second and puts my bid in. And so nobody knows that I'm out there competing with them. So they're like, oh, I got this one in the bag. And boom, I come in at the last second and take it. Now, it doesn't always work because somebody else might have done it or be willing to pay more than I'm willing to pay. And so they win. But most of the time I win by using bid Napper. Okay, so eBay is a good thing to have around now. Next thing in your survival kit is a screen capture program where you can do just static screen captures like, you know, take basically a picture.

[00:20:38] I mean, you could do it with your cell phone, no question about it. But screen capture is easier. You just screen capture something and you use it a lot of time and support. Uh, either you're supporting somebody else or the support people you're having trouble with want to see what's happening. So screen capture is good, but where I've made the fortune with screen capture is screen capture video. And this is where I can record as a video and narrate anything that I can display on my screen. I've been doing this folks, for 25 years. I use I use the gold standard program called Camtasia. You find it at Techsmith.com and I've used it for so many things. I make software tutorials where I have an affiliate link, so you can't do what I'm showing you unless you click through my affiliate link and I get paid. I have training things for my own employees, so I don't have to say the same crap over and over again. I have training videos for the shopping cart system like Kartra that I promote. I got a whole thing of those so that I'm happy to help people. But if they can watch a video at 4:00 in the morning and get the same thing, they're happy. Right. And it takes the load off of me. See? So screen capture video is extremely important for your toolkit. You can make all kinds of and this is technically a faceless video because I'm showing what's on my screen, but I'm narrating it and then people can you can put these on YouTube.

[00:22:18] And I mean, I get affiliate commissions all the time from things that I did years ago on YouTube that are just playing and playing and playing, and I still get money for them. So, so screen capture video is important for your your kit. All right then a good shopping cart system. Now like I said recently, kickstart cart for 24 years is now going out of business. Uh, kickstart cart was my private label of one shopping cart. But this is really the key to your survival is having email, broadcast auto responders and being able to collect money through a high level shopping cart system. The ones now have page builders. You can build your whole website in them. They have webinars inside. They have the emails, the auto responders, the coupons, the upselling, all the things that I've covered on other episodes. I think I told you, you should probably listen to episode 985 to 987 to see how you can save money and make money with all these automation tools. So that's that's if you're serious about it. I mean, yeah, all told, with all of this stuff, you're spending less than a couple hundred dollars a month to have this, these survival kits to actually do this business. So when people complain to me like, oh, well, I don't want to pay $119 a month for something.

[00:23:42] Well, go get a job at Starbucks. I mean, suit yourself. You're not serious about being in an online business, and there are millions of those people out there, millions and millions. And they're fueled by these whippersnappers and these rip off people, and they're in Pakistan or somewhere, and they're great copywriters and tell you, this stuff's going to, you know, we should be charging $1,997 for this, but today it's only going to be $7, you know? So so if you think that that $7 is going to be the end all, be all for your internet business, well, you're a highly educated idiot, which is, like I said, my new book coming out. So, so no, you got to invest in real tools and, and deal with real people who have had real success. And that's harder to find now because there's millions of people out there claiming success that they didn't have. They're just pulling the wool over your eyes. So it's harder and harder to find people that are credible that have been around and made legitimate millions. Not just selling how to get rich stuff, but actually selling stuff. Like for instance, I sell protection dogs, I sell tennis stuff, I sell public speaking stuff, and I sell internet marketing stuff because people begged me to teach them this stuff. After I got successful selling public speaking stuff, which everybody hates. Right. So so it wasn't easy. You had to really do it correctly to be able to sell public speaking stuff.

[00:25:17] And we sell other stuff too. So anyway, that's your survival kit. If you have all those things, go back and listen to this or get the transcript or the show notes. Get those things in place. Some of them you probably already have a word processor that will maybe convert to PDF. You know, some of the things like the the Roboform is cheap. The the short keys is dirt cheap for what it does for you. So there's not a big investment, but you do have to invest in yourself. And of course, the shopping cart system is probably going to be your biggest investment, but it's going to do what you need to do if you really, truly want to make serious money online. All right. That's my story and I'm sticking to it now. These episodes of Screw the Commute, the ones that are not interviews are all at screwthecommute.com/training. And I probably have episodes on just about everything I talked about today. Specifics like VPNs and password protection programs and all that stuff. So you got enormous amounts of free training right here at this podcast by going to screwthecommute.com/training. But if you want me and my whole staff to help you with everything, you go to greatinternetmarketingtraining.com and then contact me directly and we'll discuss your participation in our unique program. All right. That's my story and I'm sticking to it. We'll catch you on the next episode. See you later.